There are days when I stand in front of a work of art and feel my body argue with me.
Just a minute more, it says. Then two. Then three. At first, staying feels almost confrontational. The mind wants movement, novelty, reassurance that time is being “used well.” But the painting does not respond to efficiency. It doesn’t reward cleverness. It waits.
This is the part of museum practice we rarely name: staying is work. It requires resisting the reflex to summarize, label, or move on. When I slow down enough, I notice how my looking changes. I stop scanning and start circling. Colors loosen their grip on certainty. Edges soften. Relationships emerge—between shapes, between figures, between what I thought I saw and what’s actually there.
Walking Artemis mirrors this perfectly. She commits to places I would normally rush past. A patch of grass. A crack in the sidewalk. She lowers her head and insists: this matters. My first instinct is to tug, to apologize to time. Then I remember that this, too, is practice.
Art and Artemis teach the same lesson: attention is not passive. It is muscular. It requires consent.
And when I stay—really stay—something in me settles. The nervous system exhales. The world feels less demanding, more reciprocal.
